The present invention relates to an automated integrated work station for handling goods within distribution and production environments. In one of the preferred embodiments the work station is specifically adapted for consolidating goods.
Many modern distribution systems require the storage and retrieval of thousands of inventoried goods. Often goods must be stored in bins or containers due to their size or delicate construction. Therefore, storage requires loading the containers and delivering the containers to a known location where they can later be retrieved as necessary. When an order is received, the desired items must be picked from their respective storage positions and prepared for either shipping or use. An effective warehousing operation requires the ability to both rapidly retrieve a wide variety of goods from storage and to efficiently dispose of the retrieved items. The present invention relates generally to an automated work station for rapidly and effectively disposing of retrieved items. The work station disclosed may also be used to receive goods into the storage system.
An example of an existing complex distribution and storage application is the environment of an electronic product manufacturing and/or repair facility wherein the products built incorporate printed circuit boards. Such warehousing applications may require storage of as many as 150,000 components, the vast majority of which would fit into 6".times.6".times.18" compartments. In any given day as many as 5 to 10 thousand assorted components may be drawn from the storage facility. In the environment of a repair facility, there must also be an effective mechanism for storing various items. The stored items may include working parts associated with a malfunctioning part in the process of being repaired and/or components that cannot be repaired using parts in stock while the unavailable parts are on order. Absent effective integration between the storage system and the work stations of the repair or manufacturing facilities, the combined man hours lost between delivering the goods to the appropriate work station and the down time at various work stations as they wait for supplies to be delivered would make the facility cost prohibitive.
Another typical example of a complex distribution operation is a consumer products and pharmaceutical warehousing facility which stores and arranges such products for delivery to retail outlets. Modern consumer products warehousing facilities may require the storage of on the order of 25,000 stock items which must be stored in both case lots and piece lots. The individual stock items may range in size anywhere between 1".times.1".times.1" to 36".times.36".times.18". A representative warehouse may have on the order of 1000 customers with 400 to 800 customers, placing orders on any given day. The orders may call for as many as 60,000 individual stock units and the actual number of items requested for each particular stock unit may widely vary. Additionally, it is desirable to package the ordered goods for each customer in lots of related goods rather than sending each customer a truckload randomly containing all of the goods that particular customer requested. For example, in the consumer products and pharmaceutical applications described, related families of products might include RX, hair care products, cosmetics, etc. Consolidating the orders in groups of related goods facilitates rapid restocking at the retail store when the goods are ultimately delivered. Often, the ordered goods are delivered in totes designed specifically for the purpose of transportation between the warehouse and the retail stores.
Yet another application wherein efficiently integrated work centers are required is in the environment of a production facility. Recent studies investigating productivity and quality control have suggested that it is often more efficient to allow an individual worker to assemble whole products (or at least substantial components), rather than using an extended production line wherein each employee adds only one or two small parts to a larger system. A drawback to such systems is that in order to effectively allow a single assembler to put together a product having a large number of parts, it is important to "kit" the parts. That is, they need to be arranged in readily accessible groups, preferably in the reverse order of construction. In many production lines, the kitting stage proves to be the slowest link. Therefore, there is a need for a work center that has access to all the parts and is capable of effectively kitting parts for production requirements.
To facilitate these and other distribution applications, numerous integrated warehousing systems have heretofore been proposed. Such systems traditionally include a work station of some sort. For example, Japanese Patent Application No. 53-37829 discloses a method for assorting goods that are stored on fixed storage shelves. The system contemplates moving boxes containing ordered goods from a storage shelf onto a horizontal loop-type conveyor which transfers the boxes to a branch line wherein they are reviewed by an operator. The operator looks at the goods in the box and then identifies the customers who need such goods. He then drives a second loop-type conveyor to bring a container before him into which the ordered goods may be placed. However, such a system has significant time delays in delivering goods to the operator. Further, the system is not fully automated and the equipment provided is not organized to maximize efficiency. Additionally, the conveyors disclosed are horizontally oriented which requires devoting abundant floor space to the material handling operation. When the demands on the system change (traditionally volume tends to rise dramatically), the expansive floor space required severely limits the ability to expand the system to meet the increased demand without adding to the size of the warehouse. It will be appreciated that the increasing cost of space and the costs associated with materials moving about an expansive area have become significant drawbacks to such approaches. Thus, although the systems heretofore available have greatly increased the speed and effectiveness of material handling, they still lack the ability to coordinate order consolidating activities fast enough to meet current demand in numerous applications.